1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to training aids and, more particularly, to an improved infant care training aid in the form of a doll.
2. Prior Art
Dolls have been popular for many centuries because they give young girls an opportunity to have fun by playing mother. In so doing, girls are also learning how to handle infants and many are later called on to assist their mothers in the handling and feeding of infant brothers and sisters. Prospective mothers in the latter stages of their pregnancy also occasionally practice baby care on dolls. However, conventional dolls are usually light in weight, have stiffly moveable arms, legs and heads and are not of the size and true appearance of newborne infants, so that proper infant care training with such dolls is very difficult and usually not achieved.
Inasmuch as many physical injuries which occur to newborne infants can be traced to improper support of their heads and limbs, there is a need for an infant care training doll which provides the trainee with the proper size, weight, appearance and feel of a newborne infant and its component parts and which also has properly moveable limbs and the neck of which provides the typical very weak head support of the newborne infant. Such a doll preferably should also permit insertion of the nipple of a baby bottle, so that infant feeding can be practiced on the doll. It would also be desirable to be able to adjust the dolls weight to simulate the very newly born, as well as somewhat older infants. The doll should be inexpensive, durable and easily made and used.